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When historians get around to writing the story of American culture at the end of the twentieth century, there will be a place for Stephen L. Carter's The Culture of Disbelief , a tract for the times that played a small but significant part in the culture wars of the early 1990s. After more than a decade of haranguing from Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, et al, here was Carter, a politically moderate African-American, Bible-believing, Episcopalian Yale law professor, arguing that religion was not being given a fair shake in the country's dominant culture. The book was widely applauded by reviewers across the country (members of the dominant culture, presumably) and quickly became a standard reference point for discussions of religion in American public life. Personal as well as analytical, it gave Christians (and other religious Americans) with no use for the religious right the impetus to stake their own claim in the public arena. The First Churchgoer himself singled it out for praise...